Education

All kvetching aside, this is actually quite astute. High school and college should be general education, not specialized, so that students have more options than what they initially thought was their limit or direction.

There is a glut of worthless options already that need to be pruned. More focus is required, not more open-endedness. More goal-oriented education. I do agree that education before university should be generalized, but it already is, just with a lot of crap. There is probably a good argument for the older liberal arts education, with a grounding in classics, but that doesnt fit the requirements of a competitive, technological age.

I'm inclined to think that the medieval trivium (logic, grammar, rhetoric) is a good foundation for education in general. Logic seems to go particularly underutilized, although I have memories of various 'critical thinking' drills starting from middle school onwards. The corresponding 'quadrivium', with its heavy basis in mathematics, is also useful and provides plenty of opportunities for mental stimulation.

If we think of this in terms of goal-based education, the primary goal is to learn how to think and acquire knowledge, which is a reasonable preparation for career based education. To be fair, the potential education a person has access to at the moment is much better than it's ever been, and attempts are made on much broader segments of the populace. On the other hand, a bad education can cause more damage than neglect... or a constant bombardment of anti-rational, anti-intellectual ideas in society.

I studied the liberal arts and found it lacking in focus or rigor. Most of my knowledge of the classics comes from out of class reading, especially once I began to realize how much of the canon I was missing out on. Even so, I had to enroll in an Information Technology program at a nearby vocational school after finishing my Bachelor's to have any hope of decent employment. Many of my classmates at that school had unused bachelor's degrees as well.